


go where the stolen roses grow

by stannarding



Category: Hakuouki
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-03-16 16:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13639809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stannarding/pseuds/stannarding
Summary: It's vague, this phrase - 'by the time the last petal falls' - but it's all they have to cling to. | beauty & the beast, of sorts





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "my name is not 'my lord'," replied the monster, "but 'beast'; i don't love compliments, not i. i like people to speak as they think; and so do not imagine i am to be moved by any of your flattering speeches." - jeanne-marie leprince de beaumont's 'beauty and the beast'

The castle in the forest was haunted, and all the children knew it.

Adults were more pragmatic about the whole castle business. _There is no castle,_ mothers would claim as they shepherded children indoors, ready for washing up and dinner and all the other little formalities of life. _Who would ever build a castle out here?_

None of the children had ever had a very good answer for that, but they still knew the castle was there. It was waiting, they assured each other, for something. And maybe there were even people in it, waiting too. Or monsters, lurking just outside the village walls. The forest was thick, dark and deep: people went missing in its depths sometimes, lost to bears or cliffs or the elements.

(Or _monsters,_ the children would always insist when they overhear the adults talking about the latest missing, tight-lipped and frowning. Having a monster roaming the woods was exciting. Having _bears_ roaming the woods was terrifying.)

Those were the stories that looped through Ren’s head while she made her way into the woods. She’d been one of those children before, laughing and playing at beast-of-the-woods in the village streets. Now she was an adult, and understood the true danger of the forest. No one who lived in the village traveled through it unless they had to, and then, they only kept to the path. Bears and boars lived deep within the trees, near the mountain’s base; the terrain itself was treacherous, marked with soft hills that gave way to sharp cliffs and roots that poked through the earth, ready to trip the unwary. 

Only a fool would go into the forest alone and deliberately step off the path.

She’d left the path about two hours ago, and she’d been thinking about the damn castle ever since.

Logically, realistically, she _knew_ that there was no castle. It was far more likely that some child had come across an abandoned farm long ago, and spun the house into a beautiful castle full of curious beasts in each retelling of their story. If there were a castle, though, perhaps Nori could’ve --

She cut that line of thought at its stem, and wrapped her arms around her stomach. Logically. Realistically. Logically, realistically --

Nori was likely dead. She’d only come into the forest to search for him, and she’d come alone. She’d pleaded with some of the men in town to come with her, to find her friend, but they’d all claimed that there was too much work to do and not enough sunlight to accomplish everything. Only Amagiri had been honest with her, in that soft-spoken way of his that did nothing to blunt the sting of his words.

“Ehara Nori has been missing for three days,” he’d said, not quite gently after he’d pulled her aside. She wasn’t sure she blamed him: he was speaking something he knew to be the truth, and there was no need to wrap a hard truth in a pretty ribbon. “You know how cold it gets in the forest after dark. You know how many animals roam through those trees. If he hasn’t returned to the village yet, he won’t return at all. Let go of this, Sakuraba.”

She’d sworn at him, then, and stormed back to the house she shared with her sister. Distantly, she knew that had been rude and the kind of unladylike that would’ve led her sister to slap her. Now that she was in the woods as well, she wondered if he would be saying the same things about _her_ in three days’ time.

Fuck _logically_ _and realistically._

As she walked, calling Nori’s name every few moments, she kept track of little landmarks. A tree with a lightning scar on its trunk, a rock that was shaped like a fist, a clump of flowers that stood out blood-red against the grass. If she could keep all of it together, those things would lead her -- _and Nori,_ she reminded herself firmly -- back to the village in one piece.

She received no answer though, no matter how loudly she called or how far she walked. It was when she glanced up through the trees and saw a darkening sky, when she paused and listened for birds yet heard none, that she realized that she might’ve made a mistake.

(Well, no. She’d known that earlier, when she’d first turned around and seen that the path was no longer in sight, but -- it felt very _real_ now.)  
  
Still, she’d come this far, and she hadn’t yet found Nori. He’d come into the woods to paint, which meant that he would’ve wanted to find the prettiest view. With a touch of desperation, she wheeled in a circle, scanning the area for some kind of clue that might lead her in his direction.

Oh, she was an idiot. She was an _idiot,_ and --

In the distance, a dying ray of sunlight glinted off something white. It couldn’t be a tree; it couldn’t be a stone. Whatever it was, it had caught her attention: it would’ve caught Nori’s attention, too, drawn by his painter’s eye. Maybe it was an old, abandoned statue, or some other remnant of long-gone human life. No one lived in the woods _now,_ but it really wasn’t impossible that some decades-past family had tried it.

Without quite considering her options (again), she ran, hair streaming out behind her. She dodged low hanging branches and scrambled over gnarled tree roots, trying to reach that flash of white light before -- before what? Before night fell? Before a _monster_ found her?

She’d been alone in the woods too long, if she was starting to think like _that._

When she reached the source of the light, however, she stopped dead in her tracks. It was a wall, pale-white and well-made like some of the richer families’ homes in the city she’d been born in. Cautiously, she stepped up to it, reaching out to brush her fingertips along the stone as she walked alongside it. The stone was warm and impossibly smooth; if this place had lain abandoned for years, it had certainly weathered its loneliness well.  
  
This was the castle in the woods, she supposed. A real place, then, although certainly not full of monsters. In the middle of the silent forest, though, with the sun slipping beneath the horizon, it wasn’t difficult to believe that it might be full of ghosts instead. 

“Nori?” she called again, flattening her palm against the stone. There was no answer, but she had called more softly this time. She decided to think it was because she’d already shouted so much: her voice was simply disappearing from overuse. It had _nothing_ to do with the instinctive need to _not_ draw attention to herself. Of course. She wasn’t afraid of an old wall in a forest.

After a few more moments of walking, still trailing her hand along the stone of the wall, she spotted the dark wood of a gate ahead of her. Stepping away from the wall, she squinted to take a better look: it was slightly ajar, but it _also_ looked as though it had weathered the years very, very well. Maybe the family who had lived here had left in a hurry, and left the gate open years and years ago without ever returning to close it. Maybe some traveling merchant or doctor had left the gate open after sheltering in the abandoned house for a night. Maybe it had just been children -- after all, kids were so rarely conscientious enough to close a door behind them.  
  
There was no reason for a half-open gate to make her feel so damn uneasy. 

“I’m being stupid,” she whispered to herself, as though speaking the words aloud would make them true. Her sister had once claimed that could happen, that there was some kind of power in words. “I went into the forest alone. I went off the path alone. I can walk through a gate alone.”

If Nori had spotted the wall, he would’ve come toward it. If he’d seen the gate, _he_ would’ve gone through it, and he wouldn’t have been such a coward about the whole business. He could’ve twisted his ankle or gotten sick, and for all she knew, he was still waiting inside, hoping that someone would find him to help him make his way home. She’d come this far for him, and she’d go farther. He was the best -- the only, really -- friend she had, and he deserved a search.

She took a breath, and shoved the gate open. As she passed through, she didn’t bother to close it behind her.

The courtyard she stepped into was massive, but only one thing about it stood out. There were no ghosts fluttering between the buildings; there were no monsters lounging on the stairs. More disappointingly, Nori was not there, waiting to be saved.

No, the peculiar thing about the courtyard was the cherry blossom tree, standing tall and proud, blooming out of season.

She was drawn toward it, this gnarled thing with half the petals fallen to the ground beneath it. All of them should have been gone at this time of year, but somehow, it had clung stubbornly to hundreds of them. It wasn’t pretty -- not in the least, actually, half-bald and scrubby -- but there was something inherently alluring about a tree that had managed to cling to its beauty weeks after all of its petals ought to have fallen. Stubbornness was an ideal she could approve of.

Without quite thinking, she reached out and snapped one of the lowermost branches, twirling it curiously in her fingertips. It would make a good-luck charm, something strong and strange to ward off her own bad ideas. She certainly needed it.

As soon as she pulled it from the tree, though, the petals withered in her hand. They didn’t just fall off: it was like they died before her eyes, turning brown and shriveling at her touch. Before they’d even hit the ground, someone shouted behind her, a high-pitched voice that was nearly a scream.

She whirled, clutching the now-bare branch to her chest, Nori’s name rising to her lips, and was overtaken by a young woman in boy’s clothes.

“What did you do?” the girl was asking, wringing her hands together. She reached out as though she would take the branch from Ren, then whipped her hand back as though it had been a thornbranch instead. “Oh, you shouldn’t be here -- you need to leave, before you’re spotted --"

“Huh?” Ren managed, with all of the eloquence and grace she’d _so often_ been praised for. Someone _lived_ here? Some teenage girl, by the looks of it, who was halfway to a panic already and _clearly_ needed supervision -- who got this worried about an errant traveler? She was trespassing, yes, but she obviously meant no harm. Did this mean Nori hadn’t come here? If he had, had this girl chased him off? 

“ _You need to leave,_ ” the girl said again, more urgently. This time, she reached out to take Ren by the shoulder, steering her back toward the gate, careful not to brush her arm against the branch. Ren tried to shrug her off, but found that the girl was deceptively strong: her grip was like a vise. “Take the branch with you if you must, but you have to --”  
  
A man’s voice sliced across the courtyard from behind them, interrupting her before she could continue on her thoroughly bizarre chain of commands. “She has to _what,_ Chizuru-chan?”

Ren twisted -- the girl’s grip had loosened at the man’s first word, mercifully enough -- and spun on her heel to face the man who’d spoken. He stood in the doorway of the nearest house, arms crossed, and sharp-eyed: he almost looked like any boy she could’ve found in the village crowds, but he wore two swords at his hip and there was a strange glint of gold in his eyes. He was certainly no one she’d seen before; no one in the village could afford a single sword, let alone two.

The girl -- Chizuru -- glanced at the ground, and then back up at him. “She needs to leave, Okita-san. She shouldn’t… She’s from the village, isn’t she? The one outside the forest? We don’t want her to get mixed up with us.”  
  
“There is no us,” Okita said sharply. It seemed by his tone that this was a discussion he’d had with Chizuru before; the tired slump of Chizuru’s shoulders when he said it only served to drive that idea home. “Ah, that’s not quite true. There is an us, but you’re not part of it, are you? _You_ made that clear. And it looks to _me_ like she’s got one of the branches in her thieving little hands, doesn’t she?”  
  
“You can’t steal a flower!” Ren sputtered, throwing up her hands. Neither of them paid her any mind.  
  
“She didn’t _know,”_ Chizuru said, chewing her lip. “It’s -- just let her go, Okita-san. It doesn’t have to… You don’t want her to be here after dark, Okita-san. She’s from the _village_ .”  
  
Okita rolled his eyes and jerked his head toward the door, although Ren wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say with the gesture. “She took a branch, Chizuru -- how many days do you think that is? It makes her a thief _and_ a killer. Do you really just want to let her leave, after what she’s done to us?” He paused, then smiled. “Well, not to you, of course. But to _us.”_  
  
“I don’t know,” Chizuru said. Her voice had fallen to a whisper; this time, when she glanced at Ren, it wasn’t entirely the look of an ally. Perhaps that wasn’t fair, though. She hadn’t been an ally when she’d started shouting about how Ren needed to get out, either.

What was going _on?_ Out of spite, Ren gripped the bare branch harder, ignoring the way it scraped against her skin. A thief? A killer? She’d taken a cherry blossom branch, out of curiosity, and it hadn’t even lived through being picked. Was that what he’d meant? If he was going to take his plants that seriously, then there was no helping him.  
  
“I’m just looking for someone,” she cut in desperately, shouldering past Chizuru and choosing not to think too much harder about the nonsense Chizuru and Okita were passing between them. If she could distract them from all of that, circle them back around to what mattered, then maybe they’d know something about the reason she’d come out here in the first place. “A young man, around my age. His name is Nori, and he came out here to paint. He’s taller than I am, with grey eyes and light hair.”  
  
Chizuru made a little noise of upset behind her; Ren made a mental note to apologize to her, if she got the chance before she left this stupid house. It hadn’t been necessary to do that: she was  just a kid, anyway, and she hadn’t really been in the way. She _had_ grabbed Ren a little too roughly, but maybe she was just used to the way this Okita man carried out business -- which seemed to be _unpleasantly,_ if every word he’d said so far was any indication. Poor girl.

“I think I’ve seen your friend,” Okita said slowly, finally looking directly at her. She didn’t like the feeling, but at least they weren’t talking about -- whatever it was they’d been talking about. A _killer?_ “I’ll be generous, then, and make a deal with you, mm? Come inside and apologize for what you’ve done, and I’ll tell you where -- what’s his name? Where the boy is.”

Ren glanced at Chizuru, and then back at Okita. Neither of them offered any hints as to what the correct answer was. Was he lying? Had he really seen Nori?  
  
She couldn’t risk it. Nori deserved this. If Okita knew where Nori was, or where he might have gone, she would have to play by his rules.

“Fine,” she said, slipping the branch into her obi. Whatever his obsession with the cherry blossom tree was, he likely wouldn’t take kindly to her throwing the stupid thing on the ground instead. That was fine. Everything was fine. Maybe if she spoke the word _fine_ a few more times, it would come true as well. “Fine, I’ll come inside.”

Okita made a sweeping gesture that she chose not to interpret as mockery, and she walked slowly up the stairs, passing by him without looking directly into his face. With any luck, Nori would be inside the house, and he’d help her sort this business out. He had a way with people that she’d never had: he would know what to say and what to do. 

The cherry blossom branch didn’t feel much like a good-luck charm anymore, but she still touched it once more as she crossed the threshold with both of them at her heels.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm sure you've heard a parable or two about how curiosity serves the curious."

The interior of the house was darker than she had expected. In the village, everyone would be lighting lamps by now; here, only a few candles flickered in the corners, and the windows were covered so that none of the sunset could slip through. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she realized that the room they’d entered was full of men, sprawled about the place and watching the three of them quietly.

Okita brushed past her while Chizuru closed the sliding door behind them; the quiet in the room was unnerving, and Ren was grateful -- if only for a moment -- when Okita finally spoke, addressing the group of men seated nearest to them.

“This is --” He paused, shot her a look over his shoulder. “Well, she didn’t bother to give us her name after she came barging in through the gate. And yanked one of the cherry blossom branches off the tree.”

It was as though the entire room took in a sharp breath, all as one. Then, the murmuring started, low voices and heads tipped together -- they were all talking amongst themselves, now, urgently, quietly, eyeing her like she was a true trespasser.

It had only been a single branch. It had just been a few flowers.

Reflexively, she reached into her sash to brush her fingertips against the branch once more. It was such a little thing, half the length of her forearm; if she’d picked it at home, she might have slipped it behind her ear and worn it for a day before growing tired of it. She’d picked it here, though, and now these men were eyeing her like a criminal upon the block.

“My name is Sakuraba Ren,” she finally said, dropping her hand to her side and balling it into a fist. Her fingernails pressed little half-moons into her palm, helping her focus. “And I’ll pay you for the flowers, if that’s what you want. I’ve never seen a tree blooming so late. I was only curious.”

“The price for the flowers is blood,” one of the men said, with a frankness that sent a heady fear thrumming in her veins. As soon as he began to speak, the murmuring of the other men died down; heads finally turned to study him instead of her. “I’m sure you’ve heard a parable or two about how curiosity serves the curious.”

She sucked a breath in through her teeth, and dug her fingernails harder into her palm. Focus. Focus. The man at the door, Okita, had told her to apologize if she wanted to know where Nori was, and she couldn’t let her pride -- or her fear -- get in the way of tracking down Nori. He would’ve done the same for her, wouldn’t he?

“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing anger into her voice in hopes it would drown out the fear. “You have plenty of other flowers, don’t you? I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again. I only came here to find someone, and he says that you can help me!”

Okita snorted, and batted away the hand she’d pointed in his direction. “I didn’t say that. I said I’ll tell her where he is. And I guess she’s apologized --”

“Not really apologized enough,” one young man put in unhappily, pulling at his ponytail. One of his fellows popped an elbow into his ribs, shushing him.

Okita kept going, as though he hadn’t heard the boy. “So I’ll tell her: your friend, the one with the paints? Dead by now. It’s a nasty place out there.”

She’d expected him to say that, but it still hurt -- the words sank their claws in and left wounds she was certain she’d be tending for days to come. She didn’t know this man, though, and nothing he’d said yet had convinced her that he would tell her the truth, so maybe -- maybe --

“You’re lying,” she said, scowling as soon as she heard the desperation in her own words. She sounded stupid, like a child grasping at any excuse to argue. She hated the answer, though, and she wouldn’t accept that it was true. She couldn’t accept that it was true; Nori had to be alright. “That was too quick. Too -- how did he die, then?”

Okita offered her a grin. “That I don’t know. Maybe something ate him?”

There was nothing she could say to that, and before she could even try, the man who’d spoken earlier cut in. He wore glasses and watched her instead of Okita, even as he addressed the other man. “Okita-kun, stop. You know better than to make promises you have no intention of keeping. An apology does us no good, and none of us know where --”

He paused, presumably for lack of a name, so Ren interrupted and did her best to ignore the nearby dramatics of Okita rolling his eyes. “Nori.”

“-- where Nori is.” There was a twist that her put to Nori’s name that she didn’t like, the edge of a knife against the syllables, but she didn’t press her luck by commenting again.

It would have been useless, anyway: Nori clearly didn’t matter to these people, and neither did she. The sooner she could get out of here, the better. She felt bad, leaving that girl -- Chizuru -- alone in the woods with a compound full of armed men, but she hardly owed the girl anything. She’d seemed sweet enough, when they’d first met in the courtyard -- a scant fifteen minutes ago, actually, although it felt like hours -- but that didn’t mean a thing.

“Fine,” she finally said, throat tight. She offered him a perfunctory little bow and stepped back, intent on getting back into the woods. Better the emptiness of the woods and the vague threat of animal activity than the very real threat of strange men in their own home. “I apologize again for any -- inconvenience. I should go, then, before I inconvenience you again.”

Chizuru ducked her head; Okita stepped back, placing himself neatly between her and the exit.

“I told you already,” the man with the glasses said, whisper-soft, “that there’s a price for the flowers.”

Blood. He’d said the price for the flowers was blood. But --

She meant to snap at him: instead, her voice barely rose above a whisper. “They were flowers.”

The boy who had complained earlier, with green eyes and a long ponytail, shot an uncertain look around the room, as though he was already searching for someone to support him on what he meant to suggest. “Hey, maybe, though -- I mean, don’t you think it’d be best if we just kind of kept her around? I mean, Chizuru-chan isn’t, um -- so far nothing has, uh, come of that.”

“Sorry,” Chizuru whispered. Ren wasn’t sure what her apology was really about -- the boy’s little speech had been too vague, too uncertain -- but there was something about it that settled heavily in the pit of her stomach.

She didn’t owe the girl anything. She didn’t owe the girl anything. But Chizuru seemed like she wasn’t any older than sixteen, and she seemed like a sweet girl, and… Well. Ren was reasonably certain that she could deal with this herself; she had no idea what Chizuru was like, whether she could deal with this entire situation without breaking. Certainly, she had been already, but for how long?

Would Ren really be able to forgive herself if she ran, leaving this girl behind?

“Then let her leave, and I’ll stay like she has,” Ren said, praying that she was reading the situation correctly. If they really did want blood for their dead flowers, the margin of error was slim. “She doesn’t owe you any blood --”

“Debatable,” Okita said, with a lazy drawl that served to bolster a little of Ren’s anger and tamp down a little of the fear. She supposed she should thank him for that: every word he said made the situation seem less serious despite his easy references to violence. He wasn’t the man in charge in this room; she wasn’t sure, precisely, who it was -- but she would’ve bet on the one in glasses.

“-- and I can do whatever she’s doing, in her place,” Ren finished.

“Debatable,” Okita said again, laughing.

“I’m not leaving!” Chizuru protested, pushing past Ren. As soon as she’d done it, though, she gave Ren’s arm a distant pat, as though she was apologizing for the contact. Ren shied gently away anyway: they weren’t that close. They weren’t close at all, even if Ren had offered to trade her freedom for the girl’s. “I could still -- just because nothing’s happened yet doesn’t mean that nothing will!”

“I think it kind of does,” the boy who’d spoken said, although at least he sounded apologetic about it. What was supposed to happen? “But, I mean -- Sannan-san, there isn’t a problem with them both staying, is there?”

The first man, the one who had claimed the price of her stolen flowers was blood -- Sannan, evidently -- was silent for a long moment. Ren bit her lip until it stung, waiting for him to answer: if she were really lucky, he would decide that this was all foolishness and send her on her way, perhaps with Chizuru at her heels.

She’d never been lucky, and that held fast tonight.

“No, there’s no problem with that,” Sannan finally said. “Yukimura-kun, she can stay with you until things are -- sorted.”

There was something strange in the hesitation before the word sorted, but Ren had no idea from what the pause might have stemmed. Maybe it would be important; maybe it was something she could tuck aside to worry about once she and Chizuru were safely separated from the rest of them. Most of this, actually, felt important: the price of the flowers, the way they’d died at her touch as though she was some sort of errant plague-maiden.

She took a breath, and tried one more time to reach an answer she preferred.

“You really don’t know where Nori might be?” she asked softly, now addressing Sannan alone. “He gets a little lost in himself when he paints, and he’s not made for wandering the forest alone. Pale eyes, light hair. He’s tall, too, stands at least a head taller than I do.”

Sannan shook his head; there was a wry tilt to his voice when he spoke. “You clearly weren’t made for wandering the forest alone, and you managed to get right to its heart. Your friend is likely stumbling his way home right now.”

She didn’t realize she was scowling at him until he covered his mouth, hiding half a laugh. The audacity of it brought anger ripping back up through the fear: they were threatening her life, and he thought something about it all was funny.

“Or,” Okita piped in, interrupting as though he’d very much missed having the room’s attention on him, “halfway to rot. Better get to your room before you end up like him, Chizuru-chan.” He grinned at Ren; she averted her eyes. “And you too, Ren-chan.”

“Sakuraba is fine,” she said stiffly, turning on her heel when Chizuru touched her shoulder once more. Together, the two of them left the room in silence, walking deeper into the compound with several sets of eyes resting heavily on their backs.

 

 

Ren tried to question Chizuru, as the two of them curled up in the girl’s room, but every sentence she started was halted by a soft shushing from the younger girl. She tried to ask why they all lived her, what they were doing, whether they’d been kind to her or whether they’d mistreated her as Ren suspected.

Chizuru gave her nothing more than quiet sighs in response, and one vague promise: “You’ll understand, Sakuraba-san, I promise. Just stay in the room and don’t go out after dark, and don’t let them scare you. If you let them scare you, it’s… Well, they’re not as scary as they seem. Not really. I promise.”

Ren rolled that over in her head: I promise, I promise, I promise, an endless refrain that did eventually manage to lull her into sleep despite the press of the withered cherry blossom branch against her chest, despite the dull unease thrumming through her veins.

She would leave, and she would take Chizuru with her. The price for the flowers might have been blood, but if these men could carry swords in the forest and give no explanations, then she could play at thief.

When she did sleep, blessedly, it was dreamless -- and light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we've finally reached the end of the Setup Tunnel and can barge right into the Talking Teapot Forest or whatever


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promise or no promise, I can't stay here another minute.

Over the next three days, Ren kept to herself. It wasn’t difficult: most of the men didn’t bother leaving their rooms until the evening light was already dying away, and Chizuru was too-friendly and then too-withdrawn in cycles. She’d loaned Ren some of her clothes, bemoaning the older girl’s difference in height, and she’d dropped a few tantalizing pieces of information like _Heisuke-kun used to drink all night_ and _Souji misses his father --_ but she’d always stopped before she said anything _too_ interesting, and usually withdrew again immediately after.

Okita made it a point to remind Ren each morning, before he slunk off to his room, that he would hunt her if she tried to leave; the youngest of the men, Heisuke, made it a point to bring her little treats he’d clearly just found lying around the compound. It was sweet, she supposed, although she still couldn’t trust him. Whatever purpose Chizuru was supposed to serve here -- which seemed, frankly, to be little more than doing laundry and occasionally stoking the fires of Okita’s ego -- he had claimed that Ren might do better, though, and she hadn’t much liked the sound of _that._

Today, he’d brought her an apple; he slouched uncomfortably near the door while she turned it over in her hands, strangely reluctant to eat it in front of him. Heisuke was easier to like than the others, despite her mistrust of him. He was politer than Okita or Sannan, and he’d spoken in favor of both Ren and Chizuru, even if his motives might have been suspect. Unlike most of the other men, he’d made an effort to get to know her, too.

She just wasn’t sure that she liked the reality of that as much as she liked the idea of it.

“Look, the guys are all nicer than they seem,” he said, tipping his head back against the wall. He had some of the longest hair she’d ever seen; she focused on it instead of his face, on the tip of his ponytail brushing against the wood. He really was young: he and Chizuru both seemed so out-of-place here, even though she seemed content and he carried weapons just like all the others.  “Even though that might be a low bar, considering how things have gone so far.”

“Considering how you’ve essentially imprisoned me and a young girl here for stealing a flower, yes?” Ren answered coolly without looking up at him. She dug her fingernails into the apple, cutting out the strokes of her name in its flesh.

He shifted; now, he wasn’t looking at her either. “That. But that’s not -- it wasn’t just the flower that you took, exactly. And she didn’t take any flowers! That isn’t why Chizuru-chan is here.” He shut his mouth with a _click_ of his teeth, then, and slouched a little lower on the wall. He was _ridiculously_ expressive; why were they letting him talk to her at all?

She hadn’t really paid any attention to his words until he’d done that, though. Should he not have told her that Chizuru was imprisoned in the compound -- _castle?_ \-- in the woods for a wholly different reason?

Well, that was interesting.

In the few days she’d spent here, she’d had little to do but think. She’d thought a good deal about Chizuru, and how she _did_ have to help the girl. She’d thought about Nori, about how the men had claimed that they had no idea where he might be.

But more than that, she’d thought about the _wrongness_ of it all. Separated by time from the fear of her first few moments here, it was easier to put all of the bizarre events behind a glass, to study them more intently, more distantly. She’d walked through an open gate into the woods, and plucked an out-of-season branch of flowers that had withered at her touch. She’d found a teenage girl and a group of armed men, and the girl had defended those men even as they’d claimed that she and Ren both owed them something.

Blood, in Ren’s case -- as Sannan had said. In Chizuru’s case, though, the debt had been left vague. What could she have done? What could she possibly owe them? Clearly they didn’t hold true and fast to their idealized debts, though: Ren’s head was still firmly attached to her shoulders.

She let the apple slip out of her hands, and tipped her head back to study Heisuke’s face. If any of the men were going to talk to her, it would have to be him -- and she did feel a bit sorry about that, when she considered how kind he had tried to be so far.

She felt much less sorry about it when she considered how she was a _prisoner_ here. He’d spoken for her life, maybe, but he’d also spoken for her imprisonment. It was more than the others had done, but it wasn’t a _favor._

“Shouldn’t Chizuru be with her family? She seems so young to be out here alone,” she began softly, tilting her head just slightly to her side. If he noticed the change in her demeanor, he didn’t comment on it. “ _You_ seem a bit young to be out here with the others as well, though -- oh, don’t make that face, it’s not an _insult.”_

He looked at her then, scowling petulantly, which did little to oppose her point. “I’m not _that_ much younger than you, actually. And I’m not gonna start telling you things about Chizuru-chan. Ask her if you wanna know about her business.” He made a face and straightened up, standing in front of the door with a clear intent to leave. She’d ruined _that,_ then. “Anyway, I was just supposed to tell you that Sannan says you can have free run of the grounds, if you want them. You can’t leave -- and _don’t_ touch the flowers again -- but if you wanna wander around, then wander around. Souji will be watching you. But you knew that.”

She glanced at the door, then back at his face. “Can’t I go out into the woods and look for Nori, if I’m back by sundown?”

He laughed as he crossed the threshold, offering her a smile that almost felt sincere; maybe she hadn’t upset him too much after all, and he was just seizing on this opportunity to leave her and do something more interesting. “Sorry, Ren-chan -- I’m not gonna be the one to ask him _that,_ but it was a good try anyway.”

She scowled at his back as he left, but stood all the same. If they were giving her a little freedom, she’d take it to the fullest.

 

Ren, out of sheer pig-headed stubbornness and the barest hint of calculation, decided that the first thing she ought to do with her newfound quasi-freedom was settle herself against the base of the cherry blossom tree. She didn’t touch the flowers -- did not, in fact, even _look_ at them above her head -- but she did lean comfortably against the bark with the hem of her dress in her hands. It had torn while she’d wandered through the woods in search of Nori, and although she was terrible with a needle, mending it would be something to _do._

After all, she needed an _excuse_ to sit in the latticework of sunlight beneath the cherry blossom tree. Mending was as valid as any other; the men kept it dark inside the compound, far too dark to see all the little stitches. It had been hard enough finding a needle in there in the first place.

She was there for no more than twenty minutes before she heard a voice she hadn’t actually expected.

“This feels rather petty, Sakuraba-kun,” Sannan said, standing in front of her, casting a shadow across the mending on her lap. “I’m quite certain Toudou-kun warned you away from the flowers.”

She swallowed, but didn’t look away from the needle in her hand. One stitch in, one stitch out -- and they were slanted, all wrong, but that didn’t _matter._ Answers mattered. Her hemwork could rot. “Flowers, _Sannan-san,_ generally grow on the branches of a tree, not its trunk. I’m surprised you weren’t aware, as you seem so devoted to botany.”

He was silent for a moment, and she dared a look up: to her surprise, he was stifling another little laugh with the back of his hand, looking up at the branches above his head.

“Yes,” he finally said, “I suppose you’re right about that. My mistake. I -- suppose I should give you more credit about knowing where your boundaries lie, then. Souji says you haven’t made any attempts to escape; he sounded quite forlorn about it.”

“I know when I can’t win,” she muttered. It wasn’t strictly true; after all, she still meant to run. She just couldn’t do it yet, and she couldn’t do it without Chizuru’s cooperation.

But what if Chizuru never wanted to cooperate? Would she be right to run alone, even after her decision to keep the younger girl safe? It was still hard to decide whether she should rescue the girl or let her make her own choices; it was still hard to decide whether she _did_ owe Chizuru anything just because they were both out here alone.

Sannan sighed, and to her surprise, sat gingerly beside her. He looked out of place, sitting in the dirt -- but then again, what did she know about where he did and didn’t belong? They hadn’t spoken since he had decided she could stay, and it wasn’t as though she knew the first thing about him.

“Escaping successfully into the woods, only to realize that you can’t fight a pack of wolves and you don’t know the way to the village, hardly sounds like a win to me,” he said quietly. “None of us want to live in the forest, Sakuraba-kun, but few people ever truly get what they want.”

Ren scowled down at her hands, clutching the needle between her fingertips so hard that the point dipped beneath her skin and drew blood; Sannan’s shoulders stiffened, but his reaction did nothing to keep the anger out of her voice. “You all seem to have what you want, don’t you? A quiet home in the woods, with no responsibilities and a teenage girl to do all your laundry. And the freedom to threaten anyone you like -- _don’t_ think I’ve forgotten that you were baying for my blood until Heisuke and Chizuru spoke up and you _generously_ decided to force me to stay.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that his hands were rolled into fists as well. When he spoke, though, his voice was measured -- careful, each word chosen with knife’s-edge precision.

“Do you use all that reactionary anger to drown out your fear, or is it just for an excuse to ignore all the promises you’ve made yourself? Three days ago, every word you spoke to me was about your missing friend. Now, all you can snipe about is the men who have _chosen_ not to kill you for what you’ve stolen from them.” His voice was ice-water; he flexed and unflexed his fist in his lap, and for a fleeting moment, she was afraid he meant to hit her. “I don’t _understand_ your slavish need to put yourself in danger for the sake of some village boy. You don’t _understand_ the significance of the paltry branch of flowers you ripped from this tree without a second thought. Does it matter?”

She turned her head away, fixing her gaze on a crack in the wall that surrounded the compound. “He isn’t -- some village boy.”

“It isn’t a paltry branch of flowers,” he returned softly.

She rubbed her pricked finger along the thigh of her borrowed pants, brow furrowed. None of this made sense, and his accusations -- his comments on her anger, sharp and precise, were the sort of thing that she was going to drag around the inside of her skull for weeks to come -- they _stung,_ dug at her the way only the truth could.

Amagiri had told her the truth too, and she’d still gone running into the woods to prove him wrong. To save Nori, who might have been beyond saving -- but he _deserved_ an attempt. Would he have been angry, though, to know how she’d risked her life to go after him? To know how quickly she had allowed herself to be distracted?

“If they’re not _just_ flowers, then why --”

Her question was cut off by another of the men coming around the corner of the house, walking toward Sannan with single-minded focus. This one she hardly knew: his name was Saitou, and he did a much finer job of keeping to himself than she’d managed so far.

“There’s been an incident,” he said quietly, barely sparing her a glance. All of his attention was for Sannan, which made sense: she was a prisoner here, not privy to their conversations. “I apologize for interrupting you, but it’s time-sensitive.”

“You’re not interrupting,” Sannan said as he rose to his feet. “Sakuraba-kun and I had come to the end of our conversation. Lead the way, Saitou-kun. We can always continue this discussion at a later date.”

And just as quickly as they’d both appeared, they were gone, rushing toward the ever-open front gate. Ren opened her mouth to call after them, to work the last word into the conversation even though Sannan had ended it for her -- and then her eyes settled on the back of Saitou’s sleeve.

He had been wearing pale blue when he’d left the compound earlier, she realized distantly. The color must have suited him quite well, before he’d run into whatever _incident_ now demanded Sannan’s attention in the woods; now, though. Now, his sleeve was stained a rusty reddish-brown, spattered along the length of his forearm and curling about his elbow.

There was _blood_ on his sleeve -- and a lot of it. She’d seen that much blood on a man’s clothes before, when one of the villagers had fallen beneath the hooves of a rearing horse. He’d died on the street that day, and the dirt that had lain beneath his body had stayed stained for days. If Saitou had that much blood on his sleeve, then he'd been very close to someone who was in a very bad way, to someone who was suffering a very serious injury.

Saitou clearly wasn’t injured, but someone else was. And that was only an _incident_ to these armed men, these men who called for blood from their castle in the woods.

_There are monsters in the woods --_

Without thinking, she rose, leaving her needle and her dress in the dirt beneath the cherry blossom tree.

_The price of the flowers is blood. The price of the flowers --_

Her feet moved of their own volition: not toward the men, not toward the gate, but toward a gnarled pine that she knew leaned against the wall on the other side of the compound, behind the room she'd slept in with Chizuru. If time allowed and no one else was around to see, she’d grab the young woman from the common room.

An _incident_ in the woods, and Nori gone to rot --

She needed to get out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "you can't cram every important piece of fairy tale imagery into your anime character x oc fic" you just try and stop me
> 
> as always, ilu and i'm sorry for telling you that there might be talking teapots
> 
> (also as always, feel free to tell me if you think the pacing/characterization is off, but do it gently, bc it takes nothing to make me cry)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flower that blooms in adversity.

Getting across the compound unaccosted was easier than she’d feared. The men were all up and moving, but none of them paid her any mind; she passed Heisuke pacing the length of the porch, and he didn’t even waste a glance on her. This  _ incident _ must have mattered to him, or perhaps he was just worried about the other men going into the woods with the sunlight beginning to fade beneath the horizon.

Although… Most of the men seemed to be most comfortable in the evening and at night. Few of them rose earlier than midday, and the ones that did always seemed to be especially irritable. She’d chalked it up to laziness, but -- there was something  _ wrong _ here, something devastatingly off-kilter, and she hardly knew where she was seeing real signs of danger and where she was only seeing smoke.

She ducked her head as another of the men passed; this one she hadn’t spoken to, but she’d heard his name before. Niimi was one of the quieter men, rarely willing to leave his room for anything other than the subdued meals Chizuru whipped together for them, and it was something of a shock to see him stalking toward the gate as though he meant to  _ do something. _ Had she misjudged them, in thinking that this  _ incident _ of theirs meant nothing to them?

But the simple fact that Saitou had called a bloodbath an  _ incident _ instead of a tragedy or an emergency was telling enough, wasn’t it? He’d minimized it. He’d made it seem like nothing, and although that might only have been because she’d been within earshot, it was -- it was -- 

It was  _ horrible. _

Niimi shot her an irritable glance as he passed her, but he didn’t call out to ask her what she was doing. And rightfully so, she imagined: Sannan had decided that she could have her free roam of the compound, and Sannan was evidently the one in charge here. For whatever reason, what he said was all that seemed to matter.

With Niimi gone, she scrambled up the steps to the common room and shoved the door open, casting a look around for Chizuru. She’d only come to this room twice before: once when they had first brought her in to decide her fate, and then once more when Chizuru had asked for her help with dinner. One raised-eyebrow look from Okita had been all it had taken for Chizuru to apologize and shepherd Ren back to the room they shared, though, which hadn’t bothered Ren all that much -- she wasn’t any good at cooking, and she had no interest in cooking for the men who were keeping her trapped, anyway.

Alone as she was, the room felt near-cavernous.  Before, the men had taken up all the space in it: now, she imagined she could hear her breath echoing in the corners and gliding across the floor. Chizuru was nowhere to be seen, either, which was… 

A thrill of unwanted -- unwarranted? -- concern rippled through Ren’s stomach. Chizuru was probably fine; perhaps she’d gone outside to bask in a few errant rays of sunlight as well, or perhaps she’d returned to their shared room and was spending a little time in rare solitude.

Or maybe she was in the woods, with her blood splashed all along Saitou’s sleeve, with matted hair and a crushed skull like the man from the village.

Ren scrambled back, scraping her heels on the floor as she darted back through the door. Panic had made her less mindful of the danger in the noise she made; she only wanted to be  _ gone, _ to be free of this place and whatever fool part of her brain had lulled her into quiet anger instead of fear for these past three days. Stupid, stupid,  _ stupid -- _ she was always so  _ stupid -- _ she’d stepped off the path and she’d let herself be trapped, and now all she could do was run back into that forest -- 

The forest the men knew better than she did; the forest where hungry animals roamed at night.

She was scaling the gnarled pine before she knew it: the bark scraped at her palms and her legs as she went, and the sap clung to the clothes she’d borrowed from poor Chizuru. If she could find a place in the forest to hide, she could wait until sunrise and then run for the west, run for where she thought the village must be. It would be dangerous, but animals were easier frights to stomach than men. Animals moved on instinct: the men in the compound moved on something else entirely.

There was only so much she could do to pick apart someone’s motives. Sometimes -- as in the case of Sannan, who’d only just sat beneath the tree and neatly slipped needles into all of the gaps in her armor -- she could barely even begin.

At the top of the wall, she took a breath. Crouching at its peak with the branches of the pine prodding her back, the world seemed to be shifted, tilted in all the wrong ways. She didn’t have to jump: she could go back in, keep her head down, and pretend that she’d seen nothing wrong. Wait for a better opportunity, or wait for one of them to decide to collect on the blood price. From behind her, she thought she heard someone calling out her name, voice edged up the scale like the speaker was nearly as panicked as she was. 

She took a breath and jumped.

The wall hadn’t been too high, but a shock of pain still went through her when she hit the ground. She took only a moment to press her hands against her ankles and calves before she was on her feet and running, heedless of the bruising and the scrapes; nothing was broken, and nothing seemed sprained. Even if she  _ had _ been seriously injured, she wouldn’t have had a choice, though, would she?

She needed to  _ go. _

In the midst of the trees, it was as though night had already fallen. Their branches twined together above her head, blocking out the sunlight. It would do her no good to run too far or too wildly -- something she thought even as she kept running, dodging low-hanging branches and trying to avoid the thickest of the roots that poked up out of the soil -- but she still needed to put distance between herself and the compound.

_ The castle? -- _ but no, that was stupid. It may have been the root of the village’s little stories about a castle in the woods, but it was certainly no castle.

The men inside it, though, might have been the monsters after all.

She ran until her calves started to burn; it didn’t take long, which might have embarrassed her if she weren’t so focused on finding a place to hide for the night. There were no doubt little caves closer to the base of the mountain, but they were likely already home to boars or bears; her best luck would be to find a tree with thick roots or low-lying branches she could climb to hide within until morning.

And then she could head west, running on barely any sleep and the last few vestiges of adrenaline’s heady boost.  _ Great. _

From there, she walked only a bit further until she found a tree that would have to do; it seemed to have been pushed over in one of the spring storms that plagued the area, but the roots still clung to the earth as best they could. It created an almost-cave, a little pocket of space where she could settle down and wait for morning -- but would hopefully be  _ alone. _ It was barely enough space for her to curl up; certainly no larger, more vicious creature would have been able to make their home there.

Hopefully.

She let her head fall back against the roots when she was settled in, heedless of the dirt that fell on her shoulder and the cool touch of moss against her cheek. It was easier to focus now that she was sitting still, easier to calm the frantic beating of her heart and concentrate on her own thoughts, but it didn’t bring her any comfort. Whoever had called her name had certainly seen her leaping from the compound’s walls. They might not have given chase immediately, but they would know which direction she had gone in, and they might send someone after her. Perhaps they already had, and some searcher was nearly on her heels. 

What could she do, if one of them found her? Nothing. She certainly couldn’t fight against them, and she had a sinking feeling that she couldn’t really outrun them. There had been no real reason for her to run at home; she was reasonably fit, but she’d never pushed herself to be  _ truly _ fit. If they came for her, all she could do was snipe and argue and fight a losing battle with bare hands against men who carried swords.

Had that been what had happened to Nori? He hadn’t been a fighter either, hadn’t been a fighter.  _ Wasn’t _ a fighter. All he’d ever wanted was his paints and his quiet little house, and now he was missing with no one to seek him out but a stupid little girl who’d forgotten to fight for him, who’d ended up crouched in the dirt beneath a half-fallen tree because she didn’t even know where she was. 

He’d deserved a lot better. At least she had made her own mistakes, had known she shouldn’t go into the woods and had done it anyway. He’d only wanted to paint. He’d only wanted to be gone for an afternoon.

She lifted her hand from where she’d been digging her nails into the dirt and scrubbed it across her face, trying to get rid of her tears: all she managed to do was smear mud along her cheekbones instead. 

She’d fucked up. She’d fucked up, and all of this  _ was _ her fault. Maybe she should’ve just let them have their blood in return for their stupid,  _ stupid _ flowers --

Someone tapped on the trunk of the tree, above and behind her head.

“You don’t have to come out immediately,” a voice she didn’t recognize called. She stiffened, shoving her back harder against the cradle of roots behind her, as though it might help her hide from this person who clearly knew  _ precisely _ where she was. “But I do find it difficult to speak to someone I can’t see.”

She squeezed her hands into fists, digging her nails into the meat of her palms. She shouldn’t answer -- she shouldn’t answer, except that he knew she was here and _not_ answering wouldn’t do her any good either.   
  
“We all do difficult things,” she said cautiously, “so speak.”

For a moment, he was silent. As she listened with held breath, though, the gentle sounds of leaves crunching underfoot reached her, presumably as he circled around to the front of the tree. Was he deliberately letting her know his movements? He’d certainly come upon the tree in silence.

“I don’t expect you to return alone, but you have to return by morning,” he began. He spoke slowly, carefully, letting each word have its full effect. Perhaps he meant it as a comfort, as a way of keeping her and their conversation steady: it did no such thing. “You were lucky to run into no trouble, running away as you did.”

She scowled, although he wouldn’t see it. “I  _ did _ run into trouble, right in that stupid courtyard. Were you the one who saw me leaving, then? You took your sweet time chasing me down. Afraid to climb the tree yourself?”

In the back of her mind, something that might have been her common sense whispered that she shouldn’t antagonize him further; she couldn’t stop herself, though, not with anger and fear and exhaustion roiling in her veins.

He sighed delicately. “I saw you running in the woods. I’m not one of the men from the compound, if that’s what you mean -- I’ve never set foot in that courtyard myself. I only watch the surrounding area, as do we all.”

_ As do we all --  _ there were more? Was he alone now, or was she unknowingly speaking to a group?

She took a breath. “If you watch the surrounding area, maybe you’ve seen a young man. He has grey eyes and pale hair. High cheekbones and fingers stained with paint.”

“Come out from under the tree, and I’ll tell you what I know about him,” the man’s voice promised. He seemed solemn, reasonable. He seemed like he might not be lying -- but then, Sannan had seemed solemn and reasonable as well, in a few spare moments after he’d demanded her blood because she’d picked one of those damnable flowers. 

Still, she had nowhere to go from here but forward, and forward took her out from beneath the tree. He sat cross-legged on the ground, several feet from the roots, watching her with a tilt to his head that she didn’t quite like. As he’d claimed, he wasn’t one of the men that she’d seen that first night in the common room. She’d have remembered violet eyes; she’d have remembered the soft green he wore, in contrast to the dark tones the men at the compound had all worn. 

That did leave the question, however, of who he was. 

“You have dirt on your face,” he said mildly.

“You said you’d tell me what you know about Nori,” she snapped back, hating the way she automatically raised a hand to scrub at her cheek again.

He nodded. “I did. He was set upon by beasts, as was the young woman who died in the forest tonight. It was his luck that he was found by another watcher before he’d lost too much blood to survive. I’ve heard that the girl was not so lucky.”

Ren sank her teeth into her lip. He wasn’t dead.  _ Nori wasn’t dead. _ Nori was -- 

But the young woman.

“Not Chizuru-chan?” She said, a note of pleading sinking into her words. If Chizuru had been the one whose blood stained Saitou’s sleeve, she didn’t think she’d be able to forgive herself; she certainly wouldn’t be able to forgive  _ him. _ If they’d killed Chizuru… But this man had claimed it was  _ beasts _ that had done the killing, and she didn’t think he was the sort to refer to human men that way. “It wasn’t -- please don’t tell me it was --”

“I don’t know what her name was,” he said, still speaking softly. “But I do know that it was not Yukimura-kun. And I know that you need to get back into the safety of the compound, before you meet the same misfortune.”

Nori and Chizuru both lived, then, and this man fancied himself a rescuer of sorts. A  _ watcher, _ as he’d claimed -- but had he just  _ watched _ Nori get hurt, or had he been the one who had rescued him before it had been too late?

“I don’t know who you are,” she said, surprised by the steadiness of her voice, by the steel that had crept into her syllables. Had the shakiness of adrenaline left her, or had it comforted her that much to know that both of the people she’d cared about in this forest were alright? “And I don’t think you know who I am. Not nearly as much as you’re imagining you do. I won’t go back there. They called a woman dying an  _ incident --" _

“Within your hearing? No doubt they intended not to frighten you with the truth of the woman's death.” He spoke as calmly as she did. It was infuriating. “And my name is Yamazaki.”

“That’s not your full name, and that’s not the point,” Ren said sharply. She had more to say, an avalanche of grievances that she was fully prepared to set loose upon this man who seemed to know more than she did, but he raised his hand to stop her -- and started speaking before she could go on anyway.

“The point is that regardless of your feelings on the matter, the men need you. They thought Yukimura-kun might be able to help them, but she was not. I’m not surprised, either: desperation and fear drove them to keep her, but she’s still half a child.  _ You _ are an adult woman who owes them a favor, I suspect, and  _ also _ does not shrink away from conflict.” 

He almost certainly meant it as a compliment: it still made her stomach lurch a little, and she sniffed hard as she dragged the heel of her palm over her cheekbones again. Whatever they wanted from her, she didn’t want to give. She didn’t want any part of this.  “You found me  _ hiding in a tree.” _

“And instead of remaining silent, you quipped at me as though you had the power in our situation,” Yamazaki continued steadily. “You’re not really afraid of them, are you? Or me.”

She shrugged, a sharp tilt of her shoulders. “I’ve already imagined worse from them than they might actually be capable of. It dulls the sting a bit. What is it that you’ve decided they  _ need _ from me?”

At that, he finally looked away. It felt like a small victory.

“It’s not my place to tell you that, but -- please. Stay with them. Just until the last of the petals fall from the cherry blossom tree.” He was pleading with  _ her, _ now, begging her for things that made no sense, that were certainly dangers she couldn’t risk. But -- 

The tree. Was this all about the tree, then?

“I ripped a branch from the tree, and it withered in my hands.” He flinched as she spoke: ah, so it  _ was. _ “Sannan-san said that it wasn’t just a tree, when I told him that Nori wasn’t just  _ some boy. _ If you tell me what that tree means -- if it satisfies me -- then I’ll let you take me back, alongside your word that no harm will come to me.”

For several long moments, near-silence reigned in the forest around them. The gentle peeping of the earliest frogs still bounced between the trees, and crickets still sang out their marking of the weather, but Yamazaki said nothing. Finally, though, he nodded and met her gaze once more. 

“They were cursed,” he began softly, and that same fool part of her brain that had led her off the path believed him fully, “by an angry villager some years ago. He linked their lives to the blossoms on the tree; it blooms with their vitality rather than the seasons, and they’ll die when the last of the petals fall.”

_ The price of the flowers is blood -- _ because, she supposed, the taking of blood begat the taking of more.

Yamazaki paused, perhaps to give her a moment to process what he’d said, and then went on. “They can’t stray far from the tree, and the curse… has changed them, in some ways. They’re still the men I remember, underneath it all, but there are layers that I and all the rest who knew them can no longer understand. They kept you there as a sort of hope, I suspect, as a way to break the curse upon themselves and the tree.”

“How?” It was stupid, to ask  _ how _ \-- it was stupid to believe any of this. But she  _ did. _ They’d behaved when she’d plucked that flower branch as though she’d plucked out their hearts, and to some extent, she might have. “I can’t  _ do _ anything.”

He shrugged. “All curses can be broken, can’t they? Just… go back. Stay. Don’t let Okita Souji or any of the others make you think you don’t hold all the power.  _ They _ can’t break the curse. You might be able to, where Yukimura-kun could not. And if you return, I’ll see you safely back myself.”

She hesitated, looking down at her hands. It didn’t make any sense, even as it made more sense than anything else. He certainly knew Okita, after all, and their ardent defense of the tree certainly might have been sparked by some supernatural tie. But if they needed her to break the curse -- if they needed, as Yamazaki had implied, a woman to do it -- 

Well, she didn’t entirely like the sound of that, but it  _ did _ mean that they couldn’t afford to kill her. Chizuru would know more than she did, though. Chizuru had apologized at that first meeting for being unable to do what they wanted -- unable, Ren now knew, to break that curse. 

“I’ll go,” she said, rising to her feet. In front of her, he did the same, mirroring her with eerie grace. “But I won’t stay unless  _ they _ tell me the truth as well. And you have to pass a message to Nori for me -- don’t pretend that you don’t know where he is, or where to find him. I’ll write it for you when we return.”

Yamazaki nodded and offered her his hand; she ignored it, and set off back the way she’d come with the man at her heels. Nori was alive, and Chizuru was alive. The men in the forest were living their lives on an invisible string, never knowing when they would begin to wither. 

Maybe she couldn’t help them -- maybe she wasn’t sure she wanted to -- but she  _ could _ see where this road was going to lead her.

And if she had to run again, well. She’d do better next time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tune in next time for more bad decisions made by a reasonably clever young woman!!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Speak your wishes, speak your will,  
> Swift obedience meets them still. - jeanne-marie leprince de beaumont's 'beauty and the beast'

Heisuke was waiting for the two of them at the gate; he bounded through as soon as they were within sight, tapping Yamazaki’s arm and letting his hands flutter around Ren’s shoulders like he wanted to do the same to her, but knew he had no right.

“Yamazaki-kun! Ren-chan! I saw you leave and I thought -- thanks for bringing her back okay.” His hands fluttered at his sides the way hers sometimes did when she was nervous; he smiled at both of them awkwardly, gaze flicking between their faces. It was a little bit endearing to watch, actually: he didn’t truly know her at all, but he’d made an effort to keep her company, and he’d worried when she’d run.

Although, now that she knew about the curse, that might have been a self-serving worry.

“Hajime-kun is out looking for you,” he continued, stepping back to lead the two of them back into the compound. The moonlight seemed to reflect upon the leaves of the cherry blossom tree, drawing everyone’s eyes toward it before they could truly pass the threshold. Was that some piece of the curse, or was it only an overactive imagination?  “And so are Chizuru-chan and Sannan-san, but they both promised they’d be back before it got too dark -- so I don’t think they’ll be far behind you guys.”

“They all went looking?” Ren asked, forehead creasing. She had expected the men to search, but not Chizuru -- and she didn’t like the idea of the younger woman out in the woods, even if she _was_ with Sannan. “I wasn’t gone that long.”

Heisuke shrugged, flicking the end of his ponytail over his shoulder. “Long enough. The forest is dangerous after dark. And during the day, too, but it’s worse once the sun goes down. You were lucky Yamazaki-san found you.”

Ren rolled her eyes, but didn’t answer. Whether she was lucky or not remained to be seen: regardless of how much the men might have thought they _needed_ her, she didn’t consider it any great luck to get drawn into their surreal world. Even if she could help them -- even if she _did_ help them -- it could only be to her own detriment, couldn’t it?

“You were _all_ lucky that I found her,” Yamazaki said. Heisuke’s back stiffened, just barely; he glanced back over his shoulder as Yamazaki continued. “And you’re lucky that I told her why you so desperately need her to stay, or she’d still be out in the woods, waiting for morning.”

Irritatingly, a pleased little thrill went through Ren’s stomach at that. It probably didn’t mean anything, but at least he hadn’t claimed that she would’ve _certainly_ been dead by now if he’d just left her to her own devices. Small victories.

Heisuke stopped. He didn’t turn for a moment; Ren watched his back, watched the odd slump in his shoulders, and realized that perhaps she hadn’t been able to read him quite so well as she’d thought that morning. When he did whirl around to face them, hair whipping out behind him, he was digging his teeth into his lip -- to stop himself from speaking too rashly, or because he was that worried?

“You probably shouldn’t have -- Sannan-san is gonna be really mad about that,” he said slowly. “She hasn’t even been here that long, and she’s -- you know, she’s different from Chizuru-chan. But if you already…” He trailed off, still worrying at his lower lip with his teeth.

“I wouldn’t have stayed if he hadn’t.”

Ren surprised herself when she spoke. There was no reason to defend Yamazaki. He was a grown man, she had met him a scant hour ago, and he probably should _not_ have told her the deeply personal and surrealist tale of the curse upon the men.

She _wouldn’t_ have stayed if he’d told her anything else, though.

Heisuke scanned her face for a moment, his expression oddly closed, and then nodded once. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Tell Sannan-san that, okay? He’s kind of hard on stuff like this, but it’s not for no reason. And he thinks you’re smart. So if you say… yeah, that “could be alright.”

“I don’t currently answer to Sannan-san,” Yamazaki put in mildly, as though he were defending himself from an accusation that had not _quite_ been made. It was almost endearing; it was primarily irritating.

Heisuke shrugged. “You used to. C’mon, let’s wait for them.”

  
  


He hadn’t been wrong. Chizuru and Sannan were only a few moments behind them, with mud staining the hems of their pants. Chizuru squeaked at the sight of Yamazaki and immediately started making tea; Sannan eyed both of them a touch longer than felt necessary, then gestured to his own cheek while holding eye contact with Ren.

“I _know,_ ” she snapped, raising her hand again to furiously scrub at what must’ve still been mud marring her cheekbone. Behind Sannan, Heisuke gave her a grin and a nod when she dropped her hand once more; flakes of dirt fell from her fingertips, which seemed as good a sign as any that she might’ve finally gotten it. “A little bird told me you have a very good reason to be _nicer_ to me.”

“Would it have been more polite _not_ to tell you?” Sannan asked mildly. His gaze sharpened as he turned to Yamazaki, though. “I appreciate you facilitating her safe return -- but you should leave before the moon rises too high.”

Yamazaki nodded and stepped back; here, he seemed more willing to quietly concede. Was it just her good luck that he’d been so talkative when he’d found her hiding spot, then? “I intend to. Sakuraba-san can tell you what the two of us discussed in the woods, however -- and if you like, I’ll return to the gate tomorrow afternoon.”

Sannan shook his head. “Don’t press yourself. There’s no need.”

Ren tilted her head to the side, thoughtful. Sannan’s orders were all well and good, of course, but she still needed something from Yamazaki. He’d made her a promise, after all. “No, there is. Come back for the letter, Yamazaki-san. I won’t have time to write it now.”

Yamazaki nodded; Sannan shot her a look that she couldn’t quite read, and Heisuke stifled what sounded suspiciously like a giggle behind his hands.

Chizuru pressed a mug of tea into Yamazaki’s hands as he went out the door, then set about serving the rest of them steaming cups of tea without quite meeting their gazes. There was a sharpness in the air, now that they were all still and quiet and waiting for the inevitable to occur: Sannan was still studying Ren, and Heisuke was looking at his feet like he very much wanted to be anywhere but here.

“What did he tell you?” Sannan asked softly, when all four of them had settled into a loose ring with their cups in hand. Ren had no doubt that the other men  were lurking nearby, perhaps with their ears pressed to the screens; the events of the day must have provided _quite_ the excitement for them. If they wanted to listen, fine. Let them. She had so little to hide.

She twitched one shoulder in a tense approximation of a shrug. “He told me about the dead girl in the forest. He told me about the little curse, on you and your tree. Ah, and that you think _I_ can break your curse for you -- although he didn’t tell me why any of you believe I would want to.”

“Because you have a good heart, deep down!” Heisuke blurted out, digging his fingers into his knees and looking at her with an earnestness that tugged at _something_ hidden in her ribcage. “I didn’t mean -- _deep down,_ exactly. It’s not hidden, or anything. Your heart. But we need something, and you could give it to us, and we haven’t done anything to deserve…”

Heisuke’s voice petered off as Sannan raised his hand. It was likely for his own good.

“The creature that killed that young woman has been euthanized,” he began slowly, “which I don’t doubt was your primary concern. Yamazaki will see to it that her family is compensated for her loss, as subtly as he can. Attacks of this nature are not _common_ in these woods, but they do happen on occasion -- and it was no doubt linked to your removal of those flowers. The curse laid upon us stretches outside of this compound’s walls, I’m afraid.”

Ren was silent for a moment. This curse business was a peculiar thing: she had no difficulty believing that it existed, perhaps because she had seen those flowers die at her touch. While she accepted that basic idea, though, she could hardly reject any other bizarre suggestion just because it didn’t _sound_ right. But still… Why should the flowers affect some creature of the forest, when it was _their_ curse that ran through its roots? The men here were the ones the tree kept tethered, weren’t they? No boar or bear should matter.

“Is that what keeps you here? The stretch of the curse?” she asked, picking her words with slow caution. He wasn’t lying to her, not quite. Not yet. But he wasn’t telling her the whole truth that she had demanded of Yamazaki. “Or is it only the placement of the tree?”

“Both,” Sannan confessed. “We don’t dare leave the tree unattended, and there’s _something_ tied to that gate’s threshold. If Yamazaki stays too long, he might fall under the tree’s sway, for instance -- but you, a woman from the local village, are at no such risk. Our concern for the tree is not a matter of fondness for it, Sakuraba-kun. The curse is more on _it_ than it is on us, it seems. At least, as far as we’ve been able to discern.”

At Ren’s left, Chizuru shifted uncomfortably. Was he lying, then? He’d implied that some _creature_ had killed that young woman because Ren had picked those flowers, but…

_The price of the flowers is blood._

“What was her name?” She asked, looking up sharply to meet Sannan’s gaze again. Yamazaki had told her that she was the one who held the power here, and that she shouldn’t let anyone make her believe she didn’t. That included Sannan -- perhaps it applied to him first and foremost. He _would_ answer her questions if he wanted her help. “The dead girl.”

He hesitated, brow furrowing, before he answered. Did it confuse him, that she was worried for this girl she might have never met? Did he really not _understand_ her concerns for the poor dead woman? If he didn’t -- if he couldn’t see…

But he answered nonetheless, in a curt voice made for business rather than negotiations. Let him believe they weren’t striking a deal, if he must: they were _both_ going to give a little if she was going to stay. “Shizu. Her name was Shizu.”

“And the name of the creature that killed her?” she pressed on.

Again, he hesitated. Again, Chizuru shifted. Again, Heisuke looked away.

Sannan did answer, though, to his credit and her surprise. He spoke as slowly as she had, drawing out the syllables with clear reluctance -- ah, there was the voice made for negotiations, especially negotiations quickly going sourer than imagined. “Iba Hachiro.”

A man’s name. Not some sort of beast’s. Or -- perhaps, in this moment, they could be the same thing.

Chizuru’s head snapped up at that. “Sannan-san! If you tell her --”

“I think this discussion might go more smoothly if you and Heisuke were to leave us,” Sannan said, interrupting her. Ren wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the idea of the two of them leaving her alone with him; but then, was it possible that he would speak more freely with her if the two of them weren’t around to listen?

She didn’t trust him, but she believed what Yamazaki had told her: they needed her to break this curse, to do what Chizuru could not.

Heisuke was already on his feet, offering Chizuru a hand; the girl gave Ren an uncertain look, but went along with him when Ren nodded. They closed the screen quietly behind them, and Ren was quite certain she heard Heisuke immediately start hissing _something_ rude at whoever had obviously been waiting on the other side.

With the two of them gone, the room seemed smaller. Ren took a sip of her rapidly-cooling tea, eyeing Sannan’s face, and then set it back down in front of her with a soft _clink._

“Tell me the truth,” she demanded. “I told Yamazaki I’d stay if you told me the whole of it, and I’m telling you the same now. Tell me _all of it._ ”

He tilted his head to the side, studying her with a look that she couldn’t pin a name to. “And if you don’t like what you hear, and you decide to flee nonetheless? You’ll carry our secrets along with you, and I can hardly trust you to keep them to yourself.”

“I’ll swear it, then,” she told him as levelly as she could, ice creeping into her tone despite it all. “What would you like me to swear it on? My parents are already dead, and as you might have noticed, I don’t quite have much respect for my _own_ life.”

He made a little noise that she _almost_ thought was a laugh -- but no, he wouldn’t, would he? “I have noticed _that._ Swear it on your village boy, then.”

She lifted her chin. “He’s not _mine,_ but fine. I’ll swear to stay -- given you tell me the truth -- on Ehara Nori’s life, provided that Yamazaki did _not_ lie to me when he claimed that Nori still lived.”

And if he had lied? What would she do then? But he’d promised to return the next afternoon, to deliver a letter for her; would he promise too, to return with a letter written in Nori’s own hand? She’d come out here to rescue him, after all. If someone else had already done it, she damn well deserved to know.

Sannan watched her for a moment longer, then nodded. “You already seem to know the broadest strokes. We were cursed by a young man we had the misfortune of encountering some years ago. The tree _is_ our curse, or perhaps just its conduit: we won’t _die_ when the last of the blossoms fall, but we _will_ meet our end as Iba did.”

“And how did Iba meet his end?” She was still afraid, but peculiarly, the fear wasn’t sharpened when she looked at him. He met her gaze evenly; he obviously considered his answer, picking his words with careful precision. Was he trying to avoid revealing too much, or was he trying to avoid spooking her?

Ah, but Heisuke had claimed he thought she was _smart --_ so it had to be the former, didn’t it?

“At the point of Okita-kun’s sword,” he finally said.

She could imagine it, she thought. The ever-darkened woods, and the body of the poor woman who’d died -- for what? Because she’d traveled through the forest without knowing its dangers? Because she’d traveled through the forest, heedless of the dangers when there was something more important waiting for her at the end? The point of Okita’s sword, driven through the body of a young man she might have known by sight; Saitou, leaning over both of the bodies, pressing in close as though he could seal the torn flesh, as though he could undo what had been done.

But that was all her imagination, that. She didn’t know precisely what had happened, and she never would. Perhaps they would all tell her their versions of the story, in time, but that didn’t mean she’d get the truth out of them. She could still scarcely believe that she was getting the truth out of Sannan, and he was only speaking in the broadest of strokes.

“What happened to him? Why did he attack her?” She asked.

Sannan broke her gaze, glancing toward the screen. She glanced toward it as well, but there was nothing to be seen while he spoke. “That… had something to do with the flowers you removed, I suspect. It’s been years, but we still don’t quite understand the intricacies of the curse. Moonlight affects it; as do the flowers. _Blood_ affects it as well -- you pricked your finger earlier, while I sat beside you, and it was all I could do to force myself to focus on your words instead of your injury.”

She clasped her hands together in front of her, looking down in surprise. She’d forgotten about her pricked finger: it had been a minor injury, the sort of thing that happened a dozen times without ever leaving a mark. It _had_ bled, though, hadn’t it? And he had -- noticed? It had pulled on something within him, something left there by the curse?

“You don’t --” She faltered, before forcing herself to go on. “He wanted -- her blood? But why didn’t the blood on Saitou-san’s sleeve affect you? It was far more than a pinprick.”

Sannan shook his head. “That blood was Iba’s, not the girl’s, and it had been dry for some time. Are you truly interested in the specifics of _when_ blood tugs at the magic the little enchanter intends to drown us all in, or would you prefer that I move on?”

Mutely, she shook her head. No. No, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to think about that poor girl, poor Shizu, running through the woods with a monster at her heels; she didn’t want to think about both of them, lying dead on the forest floor, blood mixing together in the moss and detritus.

But there was one more thing -- “He lost himself to it?”

“Yes.” There was, it seemed, a note of genuine sorrow in Sannan’s voice. “He did. As will we all, eventually, as the flowers fall. You see why it is in our best interests -- as well, perhaps, your own -- for you to remain here, to break the curse.”

“I don’t understand,” she breathed, clenching her fingers again. The prick on her finger had healed by now, but she imagined she could still feel its sting. “I don’t understand what you think I can do.”

He sighed. “I don’t know if you can do anything, but we were told that the curse can be broken by a woman. Yukimura-kun is -- I never believed that she would be able to do it, but we had to cling to the idea that she might. Now that _you_ are here, perhaps we truly have a chance… And your safety can be guaranteed. As can your friend’s, if he is with the rest of our associates.”

Ren’s brow furrowed. “Your associates. Men you knew before you were cursed?”

Another nod. “Yes. Were they to linger for too long near the tree, they would be cursed as well -- which provides us with precious little assistance from the outside world. They stay as near as they can, though, and they try to protect those who would wander through this forest as well as they can. Eventually, we hope to return to them -- _whole,_ and hale, and with the business of the flowers behind us.”

It was a story she could nearly believe in. She had demanded the whole truth, and suspected she hadn’t gotten it, but perhaps it was enough for now.

“If I break this curse, I’m not doing it for you,” she finally said, lifting her chin in what felt like defiance. She wasn’t sure _what_ she was defying, but -- ah, she could have her little conceits. “I’m doing it for all the people the lot of you would murder if you were left to fall apart.”

The rueful little smile he gave her at that was unexpectedly… _endearing,_ almost, although she still couldn’t bring herself to care too deeply about whether he was the next to end up at the point of Okita’s sword.

“You might be surprised to learn that you’ll have to do it for _both,_ ” he said, adjusting his glasses so that they sat higher upon the bridge of his nose. “Finish your tea; Yukimura-kun will be crushed if you don’t.”

She rolled her eyes, but lifted the cup to her lips all the same. “You as well, then, Sannan-san. You seem _so_ devoted to making her feel welcome, after all. I'd hate to see all that strenuous effort go to waste."  
  
This time, when he smiled, there wasn't a hint of regret.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those of you who may not know, Shizu is the real name of Kosuzu, the maiko from reimeiroku.


End file.
